His Chicagoism is showing though -- he assumes "not black" = white. The cities he cites with high percentages of African-Americans are all east of the Mississippi, the northern ones magnets for unskilled labor from WW I through the sixties, except for Kansas City, (Missouri by the county named) which was part of a former slave state.

In contrast, western cities tend to have high percentages of Hispanics and native Americans. This does not make them any whiter, and Renn should recalculate his percentages. Further, Portland and Seattle have high percentages of Asians, as do other West Coast cities. World War II labor shortages did pull Southern blacks to Los Angeles and Oakland, neither of which show up on Renn's rankings.

In contrast, western cities tend to have high percentages of Hispanics and native Americans. This does not make them any whiter, and Renn should recalculate his percentages. Further, Portland and Seattle have high percentages of Asians, as do other West Coast cities.

It's not a problem - it is much easier to be "progressive" in places like Scandinavia or Portland where people generally share the same politics, the same world view, and view their neighbors as being much like themselves.

On the other hand (from the Boston Globe):

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Maguro said...And let's not even talk about how much progressives love Scandinavia...

reminds me of that great Friedman progressive quote:

A Scandinavian economist once proudly said to free-market advocate Milton Friedman, "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." And Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either."

That's nothing: the national parks and forests are 99% white, and even national monuments like the liberty bell in Philly is largely white.

This represents an even more serious problem than the whiteness of the fair cities and suburbs, because minorities throughout the counrty share in the wealth and in paying the bills for these white country clubs, what they don't do in Portland.

FLS - "In contrast, western cities tend to have high percentages of Hispanics and native Americans. This does not make them any whiter, and Renn should recalculate his percentages. Further, Portland and Seattle have high percentages of Asians, as do other West Coast cities. World War II labor shortages did pull Southern blacks to Los Angeles and Oakland, neither of which show up on Renn's rankings."

FLS, I don't know of many progressive whites that would have any problem being assigned to take a good-paying job in Tokyo, Madrid, Singapore, Abu Dubai, Lima, or an Indian Reservation.

However, plenty of those progressive whites would have serious problems accepting a job that required them to live and work a year in Haiti, Detroit, Compton, or Lagos Nigeria.

The joke: "Where does a good progressive white Gentile growing up in LA go to fight for social justice? Portland or Seattle.Where does a good progressive Jew growing up in LA go to fight for justice? Studio City. Maybe Malibu or Beverley Hills after that if they really make it big in the media or in real estate.Where does a good black progressive fighting for social justice go as soon as they get a good job? To a better neighborhood, the whiter, more Jewish or more Asian, the better.Where do Asians growing up in LA go?Wherever hard work and study takes them, hopefully a better place than their parents had, and then they can move their parents in with them."

And, where do Mexicans growing up in LA go?Hopefully to a neighborhood that is as close as possible culturally to the Mexico they fled."

If I read the insane jimbino correctly the fact that whites make use of our national parks and blacks and hispanics make less use of them means that those magnificent tax paying blacks and hispanics are subsidizing those national park going layabout whites. And to that sublime (if it were only true) fantasy I say, "About effing time!"

When the local governments here were taken over by black politicians there was first a long feeding frenzy of graft and corruption, justified by the lousy discriminatory treatment intentionally given to all white people they served for a cover. African American control was a disaster, until the educated younger blacks decided that actually doing their jobs was a better way to live. The time this transition takes depends upon the leadership of the black churches in teaching "servanthood " as a virtue and then electing those politicians in place of the first generation of racist pirates.

Chris: It's this. White progressives like to hang in cities that are mostly white with other white progessives, except for the one black guy about whom every white progressive says is one of 'my closest friends.'

In L.A., the wonderful mayor does indeed have the full progressive slate, caring about in order:1. Race-based power.2. Sweetheart deals for RE tycoons.3. Encouraging IllegalImmigration in order to obtain race-based power.4. Light rail.5. Did I mention race-based power?6. Seeking out weathergirls.7. And, of course, race-based power.

ricpic said... If I read the insane jimbino correctly the fact that whites make use of our national parks and blacks and hispanics make less use of them means that those magnificent tax paying blacks and hispanics are subsidizing those national park going layabout whites. And to that sublime (if it were only true) fantasy I say, "About effing time!"

10/22/09 6:52 PM

Yes jimbino is insane and yes I understood what he meant. It is of course wrong. I see people of color at National Parks and Monuments all the time. And as for paying for those parks, that is done by those tax payers who actually pay taxes (beyond social security and Medicare) and yes those payers probably use the parks in numbers similar to their racial percentages (not that it really matters).

Progressives love the idea of Blacks? Nah, they love the idea that they can talk about race. They love to tell stories, relate how liberal they are- all for equal outcome and all that. Oh, Blacks should get preference in everything, bring back welfare, elect them to office in large urban areas, even make one a President.

Live in a city with Blacks? Numbers of Blacks? No way Jose. It is one thing to have noble ideas, but please do not impose them on the progressives. Freedom from imposition and all that.

BTW- I have never known a progressive who likes people or the idea of people. People leave those messy carbon footprints all over the place.

Being liberal or--as seems to be the trend--"progressive" is a fashion statement. It's just very unfashionable in certain circles to be a Republican. Libertarian? Well, maybe, if you are really cool about it.

The acid test for me is education. "Progressives" would not for a second allow their kids be educated in the dysfunctional schools that have arisen in cities since Brown v. Board in 1954. Busing, various pedagogic fads, the unions in whose pockets the liberals reside, the housing projects liberals built, the false promise of affirmative action, decades of welfare, soft on drugs policies, systemic failures in discipline, the absence of standards, the inability to fire bad teachers (see unions) and a variety of other stupid policies have turned the promise of desegregation into a nightmare prison for millions (yes, millions!) of black children.

Recently we have seen the liberal in chief, the first black President, a man who benefited from an outstanding education, show the true path of white liberals everywhere. (He is half white.) Obama moves to Washington, and sends his kids to private school--one of the best private schools in the nation.

I do not blame him for sending his children to Sidwell. It was the right thing to do for his children. I would do the same.

I do blame him for spending virtually no time and energy on educational issues since he became President, and for undermining Charter Schools in the District of Columbia. And I blame the people who elected him and the people who have elected liberal democrats for the last 50 years for permitting the scandal of poor education for black children to continue.

In white progressive Whole Foodsey non Wal-Marty cities, in the private schools of the Washingtons, in the suburbs of New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Baltimore and countless other cities, white "progressives" congratulate themselves on their liberality. They care about the polar bears. They want better health care (as long as they can keep their own terriffic benefits). They know that war is bad, very very very bad even against sadistic killers like Saddam Hussein.

David,You left out the slavery that the progressive liberals created- welfare otherwise know as the war on poor people. Then they created a plantation system called housing projects. Then they all moved to the Lily white suburbs and talked about how noble they are.

My main point, though, is the here and now, a time when "progressives" have abandoned the issue almost completely. No Child Left Behind had its flaws, but the left bashed it without proposing any alternatives--because they have none. Meanwhile the Obamas and the lesser Obami have Sidwell and Punahoe and Larchmont and Winnetka and all those other places to flee to.

So go ahead and flee. I can't really criticize you for getting the best education for your kids. But stay committed to doing something about the poor bastards who can't join you in these little paradises. Or stop making fun of people--like beaten up old George Bush--who actually tried to do something.

If you have no new ideas of your own (you don't have any, do you), give someone elses ideas a chance, no matter how unfashionable that might make you feel.

I employ a fair number of young people. (I am in my early 40s myself.) I notice that they never talk about race. It seems that it is now only older people like Ann Althouse and Al Sharpton, people sixty and older, who obsess about race. That bodes well for race being used as a divisive issue fading in the next few decades.

Well, not in the workplace, Lee. They know what shaky legal ground is.

Hang around young black people sometime. They talk about race all the time.

Do your employees talk about education? Probably not, if they are young people without children. But when they get to talking about where to send their kids to school, they will be talking about race, if they live in a place where the black race has been miseducated for several generations.

Did Barack and Michelle talk about race when they considered whether to send their kids to Sidwell? I doubt they did. But the issue they were talking about was racial. Washington DC schools are overwhelmingly black and they are a mess.

So maybe these pristine young folks should talk about race a little more.

First, I am sure that when the President and the First Lady were talking about were to send their children to school the main topic was the Secret Service. BTW, when conservatives bring this up my B.S. detector goes off.

Also, I am around young people in other settings as well and it is clear that they do not view the world through a racial prism like older people like Ann Althouse. There clearly is a generational shift going on here. I would be interested in knowing if Ann's son's blog focuses so much on race as this one does?

It is some what understandable that older people like Ann think about race more than younger people. Their life experiences were different after all.

You can avoid talking about race if you ignore the issues. Or if you live in some dreamy world where black kids are getting an education that gives them a shot at employment, where young black girls are married when they get pregnant and young black males are not doing crime and going to jail at an alarming rate.

If that is the world our young people have in their minds, they are doing a good job at screening out the unpleasantness. The world we live in has these problems.

IReluctance to talk about race is not a positive development. It's dream worlding.

TraditionalGuy:African American control was a disaster, until the educated younger blacks decided that actually doing their jobs was a better way to live.

Um, ok. So like when does this state commence and like where are examples of it?

Because every place I've been where African-Americans have a large percentage of the population and where the rulers are second, third and fourth generation, young blacks the cities are hopelessly mired in corruption, nepotism and neglect.

And I don't see any young blacks anywhere who are doing anything remotely similar to a good job of governing.

Obviously David I am referring to older people like Ann who obsess on the issue of race as a topic on to itself. Ann does not posts about race in relation to education, crime, and teenage pregnancy. (BTW, all of those issues also affect white people in great numbers. It is pretty clear that the antecedent issue is poverty.) She, like a lot of older people, has made race the central narrative in their lives. I am just pointing out that young people have "moved on". That is probably a good thing.

Since we are on the subject of race, I went to my high school reunion a couple months ago. My class was about 50/50 black/white. The reunion went great, tons of people showed up. We even scheduled an event for next year, instead of waiting another 5 years to get together.

Anyway, a couple weeks later, on Facebook, I noticed on the right margin there were some photos of some friends of mine, so I followed the link. Apparently, there had also been a "Black Only" reunion for my high school that had taken place recently.

That really hurt my feelings. I'm serious. I felt like, "why is that necessary?" Was the mere presence of whites in the room such a hindrance or a drag? Sort of off-topic, I guess, but I kind of felt a little down about it all ever since I saw that. Oh well.

This is a great topic, but not because it appears to show progressives in some cities to be hypocrites. So what.

There are, however, underlying themes of discussion which will become central to our continued prosperity as a nation. One of those themes is managing and planning for increasing diversity, not only because it WILL happen, but because it NEEDS to happen.

One of the key advantages of sending your kids to private schools is that their peers are all children of people who value education so highly they'll shell out big bucks for it.

If, instead, your classmates are there only because the law mandates so many years of education, and because it costs their parents nothing out of pocket, the classroom atmosphere will be lacking in zeal and zest for learning. Any studious kid who happens to end up there will be marginalized as an Urkel (or present-day equivalent).

Am I missing something or is this whole thread really asking: Why do white people create things that white people want?

Living in LA (a diverse incorporation of cities) we have cities run by blacks, some by Hispanics, some by Asians, and some by Whites. They are mostly the same except for the White run ones. Only the White ones are interested in stuff like bike paths and art districts. When the others develop, they usually build new town halls or police stations. Things that satisfy public employees and provide contracts for unions. The White run areas seem to build what the average citizen wants. I don't know what it means but, that's my observation.

It may be due to where city officials get their power. In minority areas it's usually from connections with public employee unions. In White areas it's business connections and nonunion interest groups.

Lee, young people aren't "past" what you consider to be racism. They were TAUGHT to be "colorblind", which is all well and good, providing none grow up to be electricians. Then, of course, colorblindness would be a massive FAIL, and even a life or death issue.

My point is that all of us need to know when it is in our own and our nation's collective best interests to NOT be colorblind.

Tomorrow we are going to Plymouth to see a friend of his from the bank. We are staying at the Danielle Webster Inn. Our honeymoon sweet costs $495.00/night. Plus mannies/peddies/stone message seperate costs natch.

If you don't count the major cities where liberals like to live, and only count the overwhelmingly white smaller cities, you would still have an idiotic point on your hands. But Austin doesn't even qualify for the latter, being only 65% white.

Portland gets the same amount of rain as Chicago, and has as many days of precipitation as Pittsburgh.

Portland is foggy and overcast even on days where it doesn't rain. (Where I went to school, the student body funded the "Sunny Day Keg", which was brought out whenever the sun showed itself during the school year. It was not all that large a budget item. When the sun comes out between October and May, you notice, because it's not the normal state.)

LE Lee said:"Obviously David I am referring to older people like Ann who obsess on the issue of race as a topic on to itself. Ann does not posts about race in relation to education, crime, and teenage pregnancy. (BTW, all of those issues also affect white people in great numbers. It is pretty clear that the antecedent issue is poverty.) She, like a lot of older people, has made race the central narrative in their lives. I am just pointing out that young people have "moved on". That is probably a good thing."

I am in my late 30s and I largely agree with you. I have some very liberal middle-age white friends who insert race into everything and drop the racist charge instantly in a debate. They do not comprehend that there are lots of younger folks, who because they have been around after the Civil Rights movement, don't see the need to inject race into everything. These older folks do not buy that argument and proceed along with the myopic worldview.

You can break down the White City thing with regard to many Midwestern cities also. The northern part of Milwaukee is divided by the Milwaukee River and the east side of the river is trendy, hip. "progressive" and white. They also like the concept of black people....they like them even better when they stay on the west side of the river.

Is this about being "white" or about being WASP-like? Wasn't there a book out about 15 years ago titled How the Irish Became White? I find myself interacting with first and second generation people from India—my primary care physician, the chap that runs the local convenience store and the manager of the motel I just stayed at. In my mind they all have those attributes we might associate with WASPness. And, in my community, with 20% Cambodians, the same for the Asians.

Maybe the argument isn't over White and Black, or liberal (progressive) and whatever, but over acceptance of some WASP-like approach to life versus a rejection of that approach due to its flaws and failures. And those flaws and failures are issues that should not be swept under the rug.

I write this as an Irish descendent R/C with a Northern WASP-like view of the United States.

I employ a fair number of young people. (I am in my early 40s myself.) I notice that they never talk about race.

The fact that young people don't talk about race with their employer isn't really a good guide to what young people think about re: race. I mean, regardless of my opinions on race, there's a time and place for that kind of discussion, and the workplace is neither the time nor the place.

In general, I would guess young people -- at least those who grow up in places like California -- are hyper-attuned to racial differences, because they have been brought up to pay close attention to that kind of thing, to be attentive to what can be said to whom, in what way, using what words, in what situations. For the most part, I don't think they (Whites, at least) care much about racial distinctions in and of themselves, but they know perfectly well that they have to be careful about what they say and how they say it. They think about race all the time. They have to.

From a commenter, explaining how her explicitly racist actions have good intentions "For sure, I sometimes wish we had more, because it does facilitate leaning moments, and I have made a choice to favour certain reference-able professionals (choosing the Asian dentists over the white ones in the practice, for example, and in fact choosing a multicultural preactice as opposed to an overwhelmingly white one). However, although I wish I had some Black friends, I wouldn’t go out of my way to make get some in my address book. It’s just too weird."

As to Private School being racist - in DC, of course. But in most situations it isn't, since everyone's made the racist decision to move to the nice suburb neighborhood (i.e. very pricey and only Bill Cosby/Colin Powell blacks allowed). Private School is an explicit rejection of the fundamentally incompetent and corrupt Teachers' Unions even when they're running segregated schools.

Sidwell is for people who have to live in DC proper but don't hate their children. Hardly any Rs since they don't face the same stigma for living in suburban VA.

Lee - we ridicule Dems for Sidwell because they don't practice what they preach. Of course no President should send the kids to DC public schools, but they and their supporters should stop acting so self righteous as advocates for public schools when they select such tightly districted areas to happen to live in. New Trier being a great example of a school that's only nominally public, especially compared to Robeson High (1/7 girls pregnant! go Sluts!) a supposedly equally public HS in Chicagoland.

Race is secondary to this particular analysis. Has more to do with the way America is segmented by value/lifestyle cohorts. We're a lot more complex now than the upper-, middle- and lower-class breakdown of my youth, and the races are well distributed (not equally, of course, but well) among all the new cohorts.

Countless overtures by those of a progressive mindset to black communities, for instance, were rebuffed with Get yo' hippy asses outta here. We'll do it our way. Still, some blacks crossed over and fit right in to the culture of Amherst, Austin, Palo Alto or even Sedona just as in Ft Worth, Elko or Laramie you'll see black cowboys.

On the flipside, while most of the xenophiliacs I've known have been progressives, some of the progressive parents of my acquaintance were every bit as concerned about their kids' cross-racial contacts as the worst of the Southern parents I was raised around--only more awkward given that one of their values is to closely embrace civil rights.

If you analyze a vibrant scene like Austin, you've got 3% music/media/literary glitterati, 3% faculty, political and colorful types and 3% monied hangers on. Below that is an equally large group of those who make it work--club, restaurant and boutique owners and other entrepreneurial types. Then there's a group as large as the previous two that finances Sixth Street, Whole Foods, South Congress and other hangouts.

That's the distinctive life of the town. The other 60% could be living in Oshkosh or wherever.

Philly here. Perhaps limited exposure to black people explains why they fall for Obama's phony "black" accent. [My apologies to fellow native John McWhorter, who I contradict at great risk on such matters.]

I can't wait for the day when this phrase is no longer used:people of color.

I hate that phrase myself, it's like fingernails on a sanctimonious chalkboard. Sounds entirely too much like "coloured people," for my tastes. I can't believe there are people who think that locution is appropriate.

Growing up in Hawaii, Obama likely learned to be a deft code switcher -- unlike his classmates, his grandparents were unlikely to be fluent in pidgin, right brah? Thus he would have learned early to adjust his speech to fit in.

Same when he hit Chicago. To avoid appearing as if his shit didn't stink, he would shade his speech to be more like his new associates'. Imagine Alistair Cooke joining your bowling team. "Hello chaps, shall we have a pint of ale?"

Fairly universally among English speakers, women tend to speak more poshly, properly, grammatically, while men talk less properly and with more of an accent, so that they seem one of the guys.

I lived in Seattle for 30 years. The progressive racism is actually worse than portrayed in the article. While Seattle is majority white, its school are majority non-white. When progressive parents enlarge their carbon footprint with children, they either flee to the yuppie burbs (Montlake Terrace or Bellevue, not Renton or Tukwila) or use private schools. Bill Gates, for instance, went to private Lakeside High.

I think black people who escape from Portland should be brought back in chains and forced to accept some type of affirmative action position. States like Texas or Georgia should be forced to cooperate with Oregon authorities in returning the escapees.

When Obama falls in 2010, we should go through the grant-grubbing Ivy Leagues that produce commie-nutty organizers with a flame thrower! Ivy League universities are not good at getting students jobs, only grants to be commie nutty organizers. If you are liberal, anything you do is inherently ethical for the cause, but if you are a conservative, and believe in GOD, family or business, your very moral fiber, even down to trivial autonomic responses, is subject to persecution as either dangerously criminal or the result of clinical illness. Bush 43 had two Ivy degrees and they treated him as stupid because he was conservative even though he had better grades and entrance scores and took a lot tougher courses than Gore. The lowest level university bureaucrats actually suffer the worst affectations and are likey to be the most vicious persecutors of your children. No business ever trusts such left wing graduates who don't believe in capitalism and become crooks because they are taught the only way business makes money is crooked so they seek to avenge their unemployability through their own crookedness. The universities consider real jobs and competition beneath them, so they want their little sissies to live off grants, even in the hard sciences or business. How many of their engineering professors have Professional Engineering certification? Almost none! They love foreign students because they slave up and don't expect professors to actually work for the tuition, like American students do. No middle class parent should consider sending their kids there, because these schools will destroy your entire family. The only schools that understand middle-class values are for-profits. Middle class parents foolish enough to buy into the Ivy League dream die way too young.

Don't you sicken of talking in terms of progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, people if color and pale faces? We can go on in circles about this for decades, pointing fingers at what each side has done wrong. We call ourselves a Christian nation. Does this not mean that compassion should be highly regarded? Were we not instructed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves? Who is our neighbor? Only those who look, sound, and act as we do? I like to think that in the Christian spirit it means moving myself beyond my limits - expanding my notion of neighbor, my breadth and depth of caring for my fellow human beings. What does it mean that St Augustine says the order of priority is God, my soul, my neighbor's soul, my body? How do I move and talk in the world from a place of love instead of hate? How do we move the dialogue from what's in it for me to how can I be of service to my fellow human beings?